By Nicole Precel and Rachel Eddie
Premier Daniel Andrews has defended his government’s decision to close Victorian schools during the pandemic after an independent report criticised Australia’s widespread school closures, while the prime minister reiterated his intention to call a royal commission into the pandemic response.
The review of Australia’s COVID-19 response found it was wrong to close schools en masse, particularly when they weren’t seen as high-transmission environments.
An independent review found that schools should not have been closed en masse during the pandemic.Credit: Eddie Jim
Instead, the Fault Lines report found specific schools should have been targeted for closure and that schools should still have been accessible to vulnerable children – not just those of essential workers. The same should have been applied to universities and vocational education and training schools, with a clear cost-benefit and risk-management framework established, the report said.
Melbourne became one of the most locked-down places in the world, reaching 262 days between 2020 and 2021, and teachers have reported learning loss and behavioural and mental health issues as a result of extended remote learning.
The review found that for children and parents, particularly women, states failed to get the balance right between protecting public health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and the workforce.
Government decision-making frameworks “faltered”, the report said, and pre-pandemic plans stressed the need to keep schools and borders open but state governments took a different view of the Commonwealth’s health advice.
Cleaning crews work to deep clean Keilor Views Primary school in 2020. Credit: Getty Images
It echoed research by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) of COVID-19 school closures in 2020 that recommended a “traffic light system” to allow schools to stay open in areas where community transmission was low.
MCRI director of population health, Professor Sharon Goldfeld, said school closures needed a more “nuanced approach” and that an Australian centre of disease control should be established with a focus on children, the long tail of COVID-19 and the impacts on vulnerable families.
A Royal Children’s Hospital poll in 2020 found that 56 per cent of children in Victoria experienced negative mental health effects from remote learning.
Andrews said he hadn’t read the report but that the decision to close schools was not made lightly, adding he knew it would be “subject to debate and discussion”.
He called the report “academic” and said there was “nothing academic” about the pandemic.
“It was a one-in-100-year event, and there’s no rule book. You do not do what’s popular, you do what’s right, you follow advice, and you do the best you can,” Andrews said.
He said that since 2021, the government had put thousands of extra tutors in every school to ensure children got the support they needed to catch up on what they missed during the school closures.
“Yes, there’s work to be done there. But there is a sense of optimism.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has previously said he intends to call a royal commission into the pandemic response, said the report raised “concerns” and restated his commitment to holding a wide-ranging inquiry, although he gave no indication of when it would be established.
“I have said clearly that my government will undertake, at some future time, a proper inquiry into the impact of the pandemic [and] the actions of governments. We need to learn the lessons from the pandemic,” he said.
Health Minister Mark Butler said there was undoubtedly a need for “a deep inquiry” into Australia’s COVID-19 response but that the government’s focus had been on coming out of the third Omicron wave.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he supported some sort of review into state and federal government responses to the pandemic.
“Clearly, with some of the lockdowns, I think they went too far – particularly in Victoria – and there was a different response by different state governments,” Dutton said on 2GB radio.
“So, I think it is prudent that there is a review, both of the federal government and the state governments and territory government actions, because if there is another pandemic, then we should learn the lessons from the last.”
Australian Principals Federation president Tina King said the pandemic had been an “evolving and unpredictable” situation and the federation followed the advice of the chief health officer and the government.
”It’s a challenge to balance the needs and wellbeing of the community versus the responses to crises,” she said.
Australian Principals Association president Andrew Dalgleish said schools had worked incredibly hard to ensure continuity of learning and support students’ wellbeing throughout the pandemic.
He said schools followed government directions and that the report didn’t change anything but “if this ever occurs again, maybe we consider a different direction”.
Dalgleish said the state government’s tutor learning initiative was incredibly valuable as an intervention, but because of staffing challenges, the association wasn’t able to implement it as widely as it would have liked.
“We are hoping we can implement it strongly next year,” he said.
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